It hap­pens to all of us if we lead and live long enough. We wake up on a Mon­day morn­ing expect­ing the world to be as it was the week before, but hours later our real­ity is rocked by the unex­pected. Dur­ing a spe­cial break­fast at this year’s Build­ing Cham­pi­ons Expe­ri­ence, my friend and coachee Patrick Lencioni spoke on change. He said that often change is not what is so dif­fi­cult for us but rather the tran­si­tions. The process of going from the known to the unknown is what most of us fear and hate.

I am in the midst of this right now with one of the orga­ni­za­tions I help to lead. As I am deal­ing with the pain from the change and the excite­ment about what can come, I am ben­e­fit­ing from these seven steps. I thought they might help you should you find your­self in an unex­pected (yet oppor­tunis­tic) transition.

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